


trust me

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cousy Rewatch, Developing Relationship, Episode Related, F/M, Feelings Realization, Holding Hands, Introspection, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy realizes he will always come for her, if she asks.Written for the #CousyRewatch at johnsonandcoulson.com





	trust me

He’s not what she was expecting.

She has to admit as much.

The whole stunt with the truth serum (and wow, off topic but SHIELD are even dodgier that she originally thought) throws her off a bit. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who would go off book like that - something about his extremely-ironed suit, his haircut, his bland face, screamed company-man.

But then something about him didn’t fit the narrative.

The way he asked for her help - actually asked, rather than torture the information out of her which, Skye knew was always a possibility but she was willing to do whatever it took to get inside SHIELD. The way he sounded genuine about wanting to help Mike Peterson. She wasn’t counting on that. That wasn't part of the plan. She’d like to go and read his file, to figure this Agent Coulson out, but it was probably better if she didn’t try to hack SHIELD while she was inside.

Or maybe it was just the fact that he had kind eyes.

So now, in her van, with Mike turned human bomb and his little boy crying behind him Skye makes a split of second decision. Whether to trust the very people she has considered the enemy for years, the very people who work for the organization that, among countless crimes, was keeping the secrets of her own birth from Skye? But in other words: whether to trust Agent Coulson of not.

And well...

She’s not used to trusting people. she is even less used to having to depend on others to get out of trouble. Mainly because no one has particularly offered. But there are other people at risk here - if Mike gets to a populated area it’s not just her and Ace who are going to suffer the consequences. It’s not really a choice: she has to trust this dude. And Agent Coulson, from the little she’s seen, he’s not stupid, there’s a chance he’ll know what the numbers mean.

She's grateful Mike knows little enough of computers that he can't tell Skye is doing two things at the same time, and only one of them is deleting Mike's existence from the records. She tries to calm him down, convince him she's on his side (she is one his side), hoping whatever is inside him doesn't take over before she can figure her way out.

Skye always figures a way out. That's all she's ever done.

Is Agent Coulson her way out of this?

A few numbers, latitude and longitude, Skye scared like she hasn't been in a long time, Skye thinking “please come get me”, the face of a man she's just met today popping up in her mind, and that part is the scariest bit of them all, because she should have learned by now, there are trustworthy people in the world, decent people, but none that would _help her_.

There's something surreal about it when it all ends. Part of her couldn't believe Mike was really about to blow up, part of her has trouble believing it's over, and the world spins in slow motion for a moment, the noise muffled around her. 

After the paramedics move Mike, and after people start clearing from Union Station, the destruction kind of humble compared to the threat of what could have been, Skye walks up to Agent Coulson.

“Thank you, for coming to save me,” she tells him. She knows he didn't come _for her_ specifically, but it felt like that a bit. He has to know what a gamble it was for Skye to trust that they’d come, when she asked.

“You brought us to Mister Peterson,” Coulson explains. “You helped avoid a major incident.”

Skye smiles. She didn't expect to be (kind of) praised by a SHIELD guy any time soon. 

“I'm going to go with Ace, okay?” she tells him, walking away.

She looks around at the people leaving the station, visibly scared, mostly confused, not knowing how close they came to disaster. Skye is glad she made the call to trust the scary men in dark suits after all.

Or at least one of them.

 

+++

 

She’s not sure she’s going to be able to be there when he wakes up.

There’s a lot to clean up during the next hours, and the next day (her mother’s body, but she doesn’t want to think about that; and there’s Cal, who needs to stay in a cell, and the rest of the Inhumans, confused, feeling betrayed, their world gone in a moment, thanks to Skye).

She makes it, but barely so.

He's been awake intermitently, but also in and out of surgery, the doctors trying to keep his nerve endings alive enough for a future prosthetic, but mainly trying to keep his wound from getting infected. When Skye visits his infirmary room he's still surrounded by tubes and machines that make Skye's stomach drop with aprehension and guilt and some undefined feeling of never wanting to see Coulson hurt or weak. There are sline drips and drainage tubes connected to his arm. She sits by his side, his left side, because she doesn't want him to think she's put off by his stump. She's at that point where she is so tired she can no longer go to sleep. Coulson is sweating, in obvious constant pain, but not wanting to rest either. Skye wonders if he is afraid to sleep – she knows she is.

He asks about how the work is going, what is SHIELD doing with the surrendered Inhumans, how is Skye dealing with it all. His voice sounds heavy and a bit sleepy but his words make it clear that he's not feeling woozy or distracted. His skin looks a bit yellow and he looks painfully weak. It's not the first or second time Skye has seen him hurt like this, but it's not something she can get used to.

It's only after a while that the conversations turns to what happened on the Illiad before SHIELD got there, about what Jiaying did, Raina's fate, Skye being imprisoned by her own mother, and Mack's almost miraculous intervention.

“I knew you’d get my message,” Skye says. “I knew that you’d warn SHIELD about Jiaying’s plan. That you’d trust me. Even after all that’s happened.”

“The way things went down in Afterlife, the easiest explanation to believe was that SHIELD was attacking.”

His predictable but unbelievable understanding makes Skye feel even worse.

“I didn't know what she was,” she tells him, feeling her voice choking. “I didn't know what she was planning-”

She can't go on. But she has promised herself not to cry in front of Coulson of all people, how unfair would that be.

“It wasn't your fault,” Coulson tells her, leaning as much as he can, reaching out with the arm that's not connected to tubes and machines, and touching her shoulder gently. “This... it's not on you. You are the one who's lost the most.”

He seems to be the one choking up, too much emotion in his voice. Emotion for her.

Skye snorts softly, floored by the unfairness of Coulson lying on this gurney, his hand amputated, and he is still trying to _comfort her_.

Even with the whirring of the machines around them, the silence is defeaning. Skye feels like she should say more, or rather something _better_ , fix with words what she provoked with actions – fix the endless strings of “what if” in her mind. And the worst what if of all, the one that would have come to be if Coulson had been anyone else.

“I keep thinking how much worse it could have been,” she admits. “If you hadn't believed my warning. All those agents...”

Coulson nods quietly, never one to enjoy credit but also not given to false modesty.

He knows what could have happened, something way more permanent than a family tragedy.

Except it wasn't a “what if”.

It was a fixed outcome. 

Deep down she never had any doubts that Coulson would get her message, that he would trust she was trying to warn them. Deep down, but it has taken her a long time (is it years now?) to get used to that voice inside her, the one that fights with the other voices, the one that fights with the other voices saying everything is her fault and that she deserves everything bad that happens to her, this other voice, the one she started hearing when she joined SHIELD, the one that says _Coulson_ , the one that says Coulson trusts you, Coulson values you, Coulson will help, Skye has learned to follow, to follow blindly, because that voice has saved lives. Because it has saved her over and over.

 

+++

 

The comms are not working.

There has been working for a while, at least since halfway her fight.

Daisy is pretty sure it’s the hardware on her end, with the way her ear is bleeding right now. It’s not the only place that’s bleeding. That means she has to think, quickly.

The team must be at one of the other locations, chasing smoke. Does anyone know her exact location? She had to chase the suspects all around the compound, there are at least four abandoned buildings that look exactly the same here. Daisy needs help _right now_. A glitch in the comms is not enough to raise the alarm. Daisy looks around the place - she is stumbling, the strength.

She forces herself to calm down, she has been in worse situations than this. This is the control room. _Computer_ she thinks, falling back on her instincts for that. Before she was Quake there was this, and it has saved her life more than once.

 _Coulson_ , she thinks. He is always the first person to pop into her mind when she is in trouble. If she could get a message to him - but she doubts these bad guys’ set up can connect with a super not-so-secret organization just like that. Okay, Daisy decides, she will have to kick the door down.

Next thing she knows she is back in the base, having passed out for twenty minutes, and there are young medbay assistants around her, taking care of her injuries.

“Welcome back,” Coulson says.

His relaxed, almost amused expression tells her the wounds weren’t that serious after all, and the loss of blood was easy to fix even on the journey home. By the time she wakes up the bullet hole in her side has stopped bleeding and thanks to the drugs it only feel like a slightly annoying, itchy spot.

The doctors bandage her ear and left hand too. Coulson stays with her while they patch her up, sitting by her right side, the only one she can hear from right now..

“You hacked my phone,” he points out, feigning offense.

“Yeah and it wasn’t easy, considering I set up your security protocols myself…”

“Hacking SHIELD, that was pretty old school,” Coulson comments. 

“Hey, if a Director can’t hack her own organization… ouch.”

She winces as a young lab assistant finishes applying the gauze to the cut on her shoulder.

The amusement disappears from Coulson's face, replaced by something equally familiar.

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

Daisy waves it off.

“Now I am. Thank you for coming to save me.”

“Saving you?” he chuckles. “You did all the heavy lifting, I just brought you an ice pack.”

Daisy knows her value, but she doesn't like it when Coulson shrugs off his own credit. She likes that about him, but she doesn't _like it_ , because she knows all too well what it means to get used to that mindset, to shrink yourself. She doesn't want him to do that for her.

At least she wants Coulson to know she thinks it's a big deal, just “bringing an ice pack”, and he reaches to rest her hand on the crook of his elbow. She frowns, that doesn't feel right, she thinks. That doesn't feel enough. She drops her hand along his arm, until her fingers find Coulson's knuckles. He arches his eyebrows ever so slightly, a softly confused look that makes Daisy realize she hasn't really been saying all that out loud. She explains.

“You always come when I call you,” she says, squeezing his fingers. “You always understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

He always hears her.

“I mean to, anyway,” Coulson says casually – like he didn't know what that means to Daisy, what it meant to Skye, to have someone who is always fighting his way to her. But he knows and the lightness of his voice is not ignorance. It's confidence. 

“I know.”

He’s the first person to pop up in her mind when she is in trouble. And when she is hurt or sad. When she’s happy too. He is always on her mind - she should probably tell Coulson about this, but she decides to wait until they are not in the infirmary with doctor buzzing around them, and when she’s not covered in her own blood and feeling all gross.

For now it's good enough that she is not taking her hand away, and that Coulson is not pulling back either, and there is something almost natural, _to be expected_ , about the image of them holding hands in here, even as the medics keep swarming around them, like they, too, find it unsurprising.


End file.
